March 25, 2014

Both go to articles written by Sahil Kapur, whose name I first noticed in connection with the Scalia piece yesterday. I didn't blog about that because the legal stupidity of it annoyed me but also bored me too much to explain. I happened to see Kapur's name again this morning as I clicked on a link at Drudge that read "LIMBAUGH RIPS MEDIA": 'PIG IGNORANT'..." Limbaugh excoriates the media for not understanding that self-employed persons — such as Matt Drudge — have to pay quarterly installments on their taxes, so Drudge was not lying when he said he was already paying the penalty for declining to buy health insurance.

The individual mandate went into effect Jan. 1 of this year, and most people paying their taxes right now are paying taxes for 2013. 'Dude, there's no penalty until next yr,' Sahil Kapur of the left-wing Talking Points Memo tweeted. Kapur's colleague at TPM Dylan Scott wrote a full story with a headline alleging Drudge was 'probably lying.' 'Americans don't pay a penalty for not having health insurance until they file their 2014 taxes -- in 2015,' Scott wrote.

Love it. An effeminate l'il toothless snake, slim 'n' trim from his regular yoga class, sipping chai latte and curling up with his iPad to do a little Facebooking on the back of a lime-green Prius. I'm guessing the same design team that came up with Pajama Boy?

I also like Dr. Weevil:

Unlike the Gadsden flag snake, this one doesn't seem to be a rattlesnake. The point of the original flag is that the snake-warrior doesn't strike first, doesn't go in search of people to bite, but if you step on him, he will bite back and hurt you worse than you hurt him. The Obamacare snake just bites people.

Yeah, and also, if you tread on a stethoscope, it doesn't attack you. You can quite successfully survive stomping all over a stethoscope. And why would they want to portray that stethoscope as being like a rattlesnake? The message seems to be that Obamacare is threatening you and can kill you.

Anyway, I have no problem with TPM noting that Obama has appropriated the old Gadsden flag, which has of late been strongly associated with the Tea Party. And it's not Kapur who called Obama a troll. I just found all that interesting and was surprised to see Kapur's name again.

It's that Scalia piece that is so irritating. Kapur is not responsible for the photo of Scalia coming out of the darkness with his hands in the "Boo!" position under the word "Haunts." But he is responsible for writing such a nitwit explanation of a legal problem. Scalia wrote the majority opinion in the case that most clearly explains what the Free Exercise Clause means — which is that there's no constitutional right to exemptions from neutral, generally applicable laws. The case that's currently before the Supreme Court (Hobby Lobby) is based on the statute — the Religious Freedom Restoration Act — that Congress passed after the Court decided that Free Exercise case, so now there is a statutory right to exemptions. There's nothing haunting about this. There's the Constitution, which needed interpretation, and there are statutes, which can extend more rights than the Constitution provides. These are different texts and they require independent interpretation.

It's dumb (or disingenuous) to portray Scalia as somehow troubled by needing to apply a statute that requires courts to protect religion more than the Constitution requires. In fact, if anything, I could see him being especially deferential to Congress's choice to trump a judicial opinion with a clearly stated statutory entitlement. The problem to be argued before the Court today is about 2 statutes and the way they interact. It's Congress, not Scalia, that is "haunted" by the past. Congress enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a clear text, and it had the power to put text in the Affordable Care Act that would exclude the application of the RFRA. It didn't!

This is about statutes and the politicos who produce them, not the judges who stand back and let them trip all over themselves pandering to everyone. If the Congress that passed the Affordable Care Act had wanted to exempt it from the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, it could have done so explicitly. It did not. Why should the Court cut back Congress's absurdly broad RFRA to help it out with what it failed to bother to do with the ACA?

142 comments:

This may be a dumb question, as a good deal of the people who are on this blog are law-oriented and probably know this, but why is Sebelius listed first on the Hobby Lobby case and second on the Conestoga case? Is the government the plaintiff in one and defendant in the other?

The contraception mandate bothers me in a very simple way. It seems like bad citizenship--like a violation of the Don't Be A Dick philosophy--to use the power of the state to compel people to do something they don't want to do absent an extremely important reason. Most ordinary Americans in 2014 would generally agree with the cultural principle that they would not allow someone to make them so something they would prefer not to. My neighbor can't force me to plant roses in my yard because he likes their smell wafting through the neighborhood and no normal person would argue that he should have that power. And yet many people OK with abandoning that principle when it is the government doing the compelling. I don't understand it.

And that pitiful High School Marketing Students of America attempt at "trolling the Tea Party" bothers me because it sets up the Gadsden flag as some kind of exclusive Tea Party thing ripe for mocking, when it's actually a Real Historical Thing deserving of all Americans' respect. But then again the leftist True Believers generally have no respect for American history, so it's par for the course.

CWJ - when the fee-yancy and I moved to Texas, we made a point of moving to a NoHOA area. So if any of my neighbors have suggestions as to what I can do with my property, I can explain that I need that land for my speaker tower and yes, Black Sabbath is forever. (I need that other piece of land for my pistol range.)

We had a fun discussion about this with one of the realtors we talked to over dinner. She brought her husband, who was Don't Tread On Me before it was fashionable.

Now, to be fair, neighbors have an influence on her job because they can affect the perception of the property she represents.

But she was describing all the terrible things neighbors can do using their own property and the husband and I basically responded to each one with "Yes. And...?"

It's a door that swings both ways: leave alone to be let alone. Or pretty soon the guy who tells you what color your mailbox can be is telling you what campaign signs you can put on your lawn in an election year. For the Association.

Forget it Ann, its TPM. How many of it's readers are even capable of earning enough to be paying quarterly taxes? They couldn't buy a clue with a C-note. There's a reason TPM stands for talking points morons.

We need a like button. I liked Mead's comment of "... all I got was this lousy insurance requirement".

We shouldn't forget that ObamaCare was written in the dead of night by Harry Reid's office, voted on, unread, by the Senate hours later and sent to the House which passed it "as is" so it would not have to go back to the Senate where Scott Brown's vote would have killed it.

Therefore, there was no internal consistency check. There was no opportunity for clarifying amendments. There was no opportunity for anything Harry Reid did not think was appropriate. That is why we keep finding these unintended consequences that Obama tries to paper over with Executive Orders.

That is why the idea of "fixing" ObamaCare is a very bad idea. There are so many traps in the bill (as well as in the stacks of "rules") that no one could untangle the mess. This is just like a badly designed web site. Best to start all over than try to add undocumented patch upon undocumented patch in a vain attempt to fix it.

If the Republicans get control of the Senate, they should identify what the minimum requirements of a health care system should be, and create a much simpler, easy to understand bill and send that to Obama.

"It's dumb (or disingenuous) to portray Scalia as somehow troubled by needing to apply a statute that requires courts to protect religion more than the Constitution requires."

Well, that is, unless you assume that the primary purpose of jurisprudence is to impose your personal opinions whenever possible. In that case, the only "legal problem" is to find a justification for doing so.

So, depending on your opionion of Scalia, the only thing that might be dumb (or disingenuous) would be to assume he's so lacking in ethics that he'd start with the answer and then invent justifications to support it, independently of the legal issues involved.

The people criticizing Drudge aren't even right about non-self employed people. Most people aren't paying their 2013 taxes right now. They're applying to get their zero interest loans to the governments repaid.

There are several lines on my pay stub that tell me that I'm paying my 2014 taxes right now.

when people talk about an "unproductive" Congress they seem to think that it's a volume business. I would much rather that they took the time to iron out conflicts between bills before they go to the President's desk for signature. That might cut down on the cases that the high Court takes up. And perhaps, it will reduce the sheer number of laws that really shouldn't be enacted in the first place.

RecChief, there's a fatal flaw in your plan. Bills in Congress, like some programming languages, are write only. It's just easier to vote Yea and let the President's Secretaries and the courts do all that tiresome reading.

garage was asleep or not yet born when Republicans supported HMOs as a solution, then DRGs as a solution to costs. The history of health care reform is a mystery to garage. All he knows is that his hero, Obama, signed a bill that nobody had read (except the recent Sociology graduate on Reid's staff that wrote that section) and therefore it is "from on high" and should not be messed with by the proletariat which does not know what is good for it.

We know about your brilliant understanding of health care reform. You read TPM and are therefore knowledgeable.

The plight of the southern farmer is a terrible thing. I propose we require that every citizen buy a minimum amount of tobacco products each year or pay a penalty to the IRS. We'll let Justice Roberts decide whether it's a tax or not, and whether that does or doesn't make it Constitutional.

There's another difference between the original peyote case and the ACA that makes this more compelling:

with respect to the peyote use and similar issues, the issue is whether the government may broadly prohibit something which impacts the religious practice of a particular group. So: use of peyote in Native American ceremonies. Communion wine during prohibition. More blandly, issues regarding church construction and zoning. And, in general, these are issues which impede worship, but nothing that dramatically interferes with core religious beliefs, as the Europeans are beginning to do with their prohibition (later rescinded) of circumcision, and various prohibitions of kosher slaughtering.

But the Hobby Lobby case is different. The government is actively seeking to compel an entity to *ACT* against its religious beliefs.

They should run on this. The Democrats in Congress rammed this piece of shit (Ombamacare) through without reading it. Only Congress can change this law, since the Supreme Court caved and said it was constitutional to make everyone buy a product or pay a tax/fee/fine/whatever.

Therefore......until CONGRESS makes a move the law should be STRICTLY enforced. NO favoritism, NO opting out for Unions and cronies. NO exceptions. NO delays. No more illegal tweaking to prevent the law from being enforced. The LAW is the LAW and make everyone comply. EVERYONE. And within the guidelines set by the law (that no one read).

Once people get the full taste of this crap sandwich that they are being forced to eat, they will welcome repeal.

Stress over and over that not ONE Republican voted for this. If you want to get this fixed or repealed, you can't count on the Democrats. They MADE this crap sandwich. Eat it.

They should also run on the idea that the issue of Health Care and Health Insurance are so very VERY complicated that to just do another, quick ram it through move, like the Democrats did would just create yet another crap sandwich. A Republican one that would be just as tasty as the Democrat's crap sandwich.

If the Congress that passed the Affordable Care Act had wanted to exempt it from the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, it could have done so explicitly. It did not. Why should the Court cut back Congress's absurdly broad RFRA to help it out with what it failed to bother to do with the ACA?

For several reasons:

#1 - ObamaCare is no more constitutionally sound than the RFRA.

#2 the government must demonstrate a “compelling governmental interest” and employ the “least restrictive means” of furthering that interest. The is no "compelling" interest in mandating birth control coverage.

#3 Over 100 million Americans have been exempted from this stupid ObamaCare provision because either because they work for non-profit corporations or because their plans were grandfathered when Obamacare became effective

He's busy trying to hunt down some innocuous comment he made in the run up to obamacare that he can use to say "see! See! I did demand the dems provide details of their plan prior to passage!! I'm not just a pathetic troll!"

My opinion is that, until Obama is out of office and replaced by a Republican, the ACA (Obamacare) will remind the law except that a GOP Congress will pass legislation to make it voluntary with no mandate. The insurance companies can then write new policies that make economic sense. Obamacare will slowly fade away as though it had never been. Like other foolish laws that are ignored, it will be there but ineffective.

Something will have to be done about risk pools for the uninsurable but they turned out to be a few hundred thousand instead of millions so it will be reasonable to have taxes subsidize them.

The expansion of Medicaid will be allowed to wither as reimbursement will be frozen and access will shrink.

Some day, when commons sense has returned, or after the economic collapse that is coming has occurred, somebody will try free market reform.

Garage's comments are telling. At no point does he point out that the ACA is on balance a good law, or that it will have more positive than negative effects. Instead, the argument is "you right wingers have no better alternative!"

Which is sort of like someone borrowing your car, driving it into a tree, and then telling you that you're not such a great driver yourself. This still doesn't make him a good driver.

1) Public funding of public health issues. 1.1) Free vaccinations ( Fuck You Jenny McCarthy ). 1.2) Possibly free antibiotics, with controls to prevent overuse. Free might not actually be the best though. I remember a study that found that patients did a better job of taking their entire course of medicine, and taking it on schedule, if they paid their own money for the medicine. This is important with antibiotics.1.3) Free treatment for certain diseases/conditions. Some to consider: TB, MRSA, Pregnancy+AIDS to prevent transmission to the unborn child.

3) Add a subsidized option for the uninsurable. Make it a form of bankruptcy, where a court will decide how few of your assets you get to keep, with the rest going to pay for your care. That way it is available for people who really need it, but it is not an option that someone would intend to use if they could avoid it.

Peter wrote:So, depending on your opionion of Scalia, the only thing that might be dumb (or disingenuous) would be to assume he's so lacking in ethics that he'd start with the answer and then invent justifications to support it, independently of the legal issues involved.

tim maguire wrote:Jay, a while back Patterico reduced liberal argumentation to a formula that I have found holds pretty true:

Liberal asserts A

Conservative gives reasons and logic refuting A.

Liberal asserts B.

Conservative gives reasons and logic refuting B.

Liberal asserts C.

Conservative gives reasons and logic refuting C.

Liberal asserts A.

It's pretty good. Except it skips the part where the lib accuses the repub of racism/sexism/classim/bigotry for having logical refutations for A, B and C. No formula would be complete without the addition of the race/sex/class card to quiet any opposition

It does my heart good to know that Garage thinks he has something with his snark about Obamacare and that the Democrats think they have a winning plan to claim no one is hurt by Obamacare.

Normally such nonsense would work well for the Democrats. Saying something repeatedly and having it paroted by the media tends to work for them. Especially with the low information voter.

In this case though, there are just too many people who have to deal with the horror that is Obamacare. No amount of telling us its all lies will remove the reality from before our faces.

Now, what worries me just a little (But the history of the left and Democrats in this country makes it a distant worry) is that they'll see what a terrible plan this is and change gears and where Democrats are vunerable, they will take Obamacare off the table as an issue by also promising to vote for repeal.

So far though, Garage has given me hope that the Republicans are going to storm Washington this election cycle and take over both houses.

But before that happens, can we please primary the likes of Lindsey Graham and get some better people in there?

Keep the blinders on Garage! It's going to work out great for your party. Next year you all should force another vote on Walker too. Good times.

I'm wondering where all the anger is coming from if Republicans aren't proposing any concrete plans to change the law with legislation.

Let's diagram that, shall we?

I'm wondering where all the anger is coming from

Me too! What the hell are you talking about here? People are laughing at you, not threatening you.

if Republicans aren't proposing any concrete plans

Of course many others have pointed out MANY plans Republicans have proposed. If that isn't concrete enough how about the three changes to the law that were voted on by both houses and signed by Obama? Is THAT concrete enough for you?

to change the law with legislation

Well we did propose to delay the mandates (at various times) for a year, each of which drew Liberal fire because THE LAW IS THE LAW you know. But then Obama by fiat just delayed the law himself, so I guess he's really a racist at heart too.

And since Garage won't even attempt to understand this post or respond, let's just acknowledge the 400-million-pound elephant in the room. Obama has demonstrated the way to "fix" the law: the next president just delays implementation indefinitely and the law dies of it's own inertia. So no one need respond to Garage's infantile "so what are you gonna do" bullshit because we're going to do what the current occupant did. And there ain't a thing Dems can do to stop it because...precedent.

ACA will go down in history like the Edsel and new Coke, except far less successful and, unfortunately it was public funded. So I guess ACA is more like the Tacoma Narrows Bridge than a product.

eric: "It does my heart good to know that Garage thinks he has something with his snark about Obamacare and that the Democrats think they have a winning plan to claim no one is hurt by Obamacared"

You may or may not recall that garage, being the automated troll that he is, along with Inga, has consistently parroted whatever his political "betters" have directed him to say.

It's useful in mapping the trajectory of the dem talking points over course of the last several years.

It's also useful to remember that at every single stage of this obamacare debacle, garage and other minions have told us that any hardships that were to come with passage, hardships that have been realized, and even more hardships to come as the law fully rolls out were all "lies".

Lies, lies lies!!

So now this latest "reset" (don't you love that term? Obama's boyfriend in Moscow certainly does) is claiming that there are no cases of anyone being harmed by obamacare.

Up next: an explanation by the lefties for why gravity doesn't exist. We simply "choose" to remain terrestrial!

Both excellent suggestions. I would add the provision that doctors and hospitals can charge more than insurance/Medicare pays if they disclose the fact before treatment. That would allow economic reality for costs and the market would push the providers to keep charges reasonable for those who cannot afford more but allow others to choose more expensive ones.

One huge driver of medical inflation is the rule that the insurance/Medicare/Medicaid payment is the total payment. France, of all places, allows "balance billing" and free choice.

Garage could you repost your links to your demands for specifics from the dems in the run up to obamacare passage as well as your links to the dem comprehensive plan to fix the known flaws in obamacare?

Garage could you repost your links to your demands for specifics from the dems in the run up to obamacare passage as well as your links to the dem comprehensive plan to fix the known flaws in obamacare?

So you want me to google comments I made 4 years ago? LOL. Maybe Repubs can run on that?

"We're mad, have no plans or ideas, and we want to see what Democrats were talking about 4 years ago".

Kapur was likely correct when he claimed the ACA penalty was not due until 2015 and Drudge was likely wrong when he cited the instructions for Form 1040es as claiming that taxpayers who file quarterly should include a pre-payment of the ACA penalty. The F1040es instructions advise taxpayers "to consider" whether to pre-pay the penalty when figuring their estimated quarterly taxes for 2014 but do not expressly state they must do so. Elsewhere, on its Web site, the IRS uses equally vague language regarding the same question. Of course, there is no harm if Drudge overpays his estimated taxes. On balance, however, it appears that quarterly filers are not obliged to pay the ACA penalty until 2015, nor will they be assessed a late penalty by the IRS if they fail to pre-pay their ACA "shared responsibility payment" with their estimated taxes throughout 2014.

Iapetus: "On balance, however, it appears that quarterly filers are not obliged to pay the ACA penalty until 2015, nor will they be assessed a late penalty by the IRS if they fail to pre-pay their ACA "shared responsibility payment" with their estimated taxes throughout 2014."

LOL

Anyone want to take bets as to whether or not the IRS would "rule" that someone like Drudge is in violation of early payment "obligations"?

Being an independent myself, I know a few folks who fall into this category (like Drudge) and their accountants all say the same thing: you can't trust the IRS to rule tomorrow they way the claim they claim they will rule today.

Too risky.

They are all paying the penalty/tax/fee/unicorn "love" offering quarterly.

This is a real problem. garage mahal is a friendly punching bag around here, and many commenters punch away. But:

1) garage mahal doesn't take offense; he just comes back with snark, so maybe he's just posing. He plays the game as though he doesn't care who wins the point. He only cares about the game. Maybe he's just a right-wing moby, or maybe he's just a ne'er-do-well. But he does not engage in argument. So don't try.

2) If (1) is incorrect-- if garage mahal thinks himself sincere-- then what's going on with political discussion around here? I think it's likely that he thinks himself sincere and clever, and that's more frightening. There's all this talk about Alinsky on the rightosphere, and I'm starting to believe it. Is it OK if people just blow about with snark and dumb points, not caring whether or not they get their ideas across?

Anxiously awaiting the Democrats to take responsibility for the pile of garbage that is called Obamacare and stop trying to shift responsibility to others for once in their existence. Oh, wait. That's never happened and never will.

To Obama and all Democrats: This was YOUR idea. YOU rammed it through Congress. YOU f'ed up BIG TIME. This is YOUR mess. It's YOUR responsibility. YOU fix it.

Drago said... "Sorry garage. We will need to pass the republican plan to find out what is in it."

"2) If (1) is incorrect-- if garage mahal thinks himself sincere-- then what's going on with political discussion around here? I think it's likely that he thinks himself sincere and clever, and that's more frightening. There's all this talk about Alinsky on the rightosphere, and I'm starting to believe it. Is it OK if people just blow about with snark and dumb points, not caring whether or not they get their ideas across?"

This is what most of the debate is degraded to anyway. It's an emotional response, not a reasonable or logical one.

And that's the Democrats bread and butter. Emotion. It's why someone like Althouse can be convinced to vote for Obama at least once. It's why they win the female vote.

It works most of the time. Unfortunately for them (Fortunate for the rest of us) it's not going to work this time, because Obamacare has hurt too many people.

However, it will continue to work in future elections. It plays to the uneducated, low information voter.

When the case of Hobby Lobby could be under discussion here, instead this blog thread is wasted on back and forth crap. Why doesn't the blog owner enforce her own rules? This place has become nothing more than a mud wrestling area. Nothing substantive has any chance of surfacing under all this mud. It's boring as hell, what a joke this place has become.

Perry: "When the case of Hobby Lobby could be under discussion here, instead this blog thread is wasted on back and forth crap."

Well Perry, what specifically is left to discuss?

The law points clearly to Hobby Lobby winning their case.

The left doesn't give a crap about the law and they want the ruling to go against Hobby Lobby anyway and the left in the media is more than happy to mischaracterize the argument up one side and down the other all the while casting aspersions on those darn Catholics on the court.

@Drago 1:55pm;"I know a few folks who fall into this category (like Drudge) and their accountants all say the same thing: you can't trust the IRS to rule tomorrow they way the claim they claim they will rule today"

The point is the IRS has not issued a ruling, which is why they are hedging by the use of such vague language. In view of the many arbitrary changes the White House has made to the ACA law, it should be obvious the IRS is waiting for instructions from the White House that the IRS can implement without falling afoul of the president's political objectives for the upcoming mid-term election. And since the White House has pretty much made it clear publicly that any ACA penalty will not be due until tax returns are filed in April 2015, that's almost certainty how things will turn out.

There's a tipping point in most threads, and not just on this blog, where the discussion ends and the flaming begins. If you really want to contribute to a serious discussion, you'd better get it in by the first twenty comments. It used to be that once J made his first comment the thread was pretty much over. It grieves me to note that garage mahal has lately taken his place. I can remember a time when garage would make an effort at debating, but now it's all drive-by snark and no substance. Sad, in a way.

garage mahal is incapable of understanding Napoleon's famous quote. The incapacity is caused by political cheerleading. He has chosen a team and any call that goes against his team is wrong. Even reality.

Right now the Republican plan is to let Democrats continue with their mistakes. And Democrats are trying their collective best to change the subject from the single most intrusive piece of legislation in American history that caused and will cause immediate harm (to finances and to freedom) to a broad cross-section of the citizenry.

The dumb asses you support committed a mistake. Republicans would do well not to interrupt them.

From what I gather Garage is a public sector employee and a strong public sector union advocate. Assuming that is true from his perspective he's not being snarky. The Republicans indeed aren't offering him MORE. So unless the Republicans out democrat the Democrats there really isn't a reason for him to vote Democrat.

"The point is the IRS has not issued a ruling, which is why they are hedging by the use of such vague language."

Yeah when even the IRS is hedging, that's surely the time for the private citizen to interpret the situation in their favor. Try again.

You spoke of Drudge "lying", not merely being prudent, because the IRS only told the private citizen to "consider" paying the penalty. That's like you saying the business owner is "lying" about paying the protection money because the mobster merely expressed concern that it would be a shame if something were to happen to his business.

So, now Obamacare supercedes the rights of individuals. His kind actually believe this nonsense. If they can't get you with planned parenthood, then they will impose punitive measures to penalize survivors.

I guess economic development is too difficult, and respecting individual dignity and human life is only when it can be exploited for leverage, especially democratic.

Just do what feels good, I guess. Perhaps another party will actually address the causes of progressive inflation and finally reject the left-wing principle that describes human life as a commodity, interchangeable and disposable, throughout its evolution from conception to death.

Rick Caird said...If the Republicans get control of the Senate, they should identify what the minimum requirements of a health care system should be, and create a much simpler, easy to understand bill and send that to Obama.

The solution would have a decidedly local character, with a bottom-up perspective. It would focus on identifying and mitigating progressive inflation, which ensures that medical insurance, let alone health care, remains unaffordable after the so-called "reform". It would be supplemented with a top-down perspective in order to address society or national level issues, including abortion, immigration (especially illegal), unbalanced trade, etc. It would attempt, as a matter of policy, to mitigate corruption caused by dissociation of risk.

So, any "universal" solution would resemble Medicare (i.e. backed by productive enterprise). It may include a Medicaid option, but that would be limited, and its introduction would be evidence of unresolved or unaddressed issues.

Iapetus: "And since the White House has pretty much made it clear publicly that any ACA penalty will not be due until tax returns are filed in April 2015, that's almost certainty how things will turn out."

LOL

"..almost certainty..."

Not. Good. Enough.

Prepay it now.

Especially if you are a high profile non-Dem.

Any other choice makes ZERO sense in the age of obama.

Quit being so obtuse Iapetus.

There is a new political reality in DC. Stop pretending it can be ignored.

I also like Dr. Weevil: Unlike the Gadsden flag snake, this one doesn't seem to be a rattlesnake. The point of the original flag is that the snake-warrior doesn't strike first, doesn't go in search of people to bite, but if you step on him, he will bite back and hurt you worse than you hurt him. The Obamacare snake just bites people.

"And why would they want to portray that stethoscope as being like a rattlesnake?"

Coiled like a rattlesnake ready to strike. Or like a dirty stethoscope ready to infect. Or like an IUD ready to scrape/abort. Or like a bad faith Stupak Amendment - executive order deal ready to unwind.